As many of
you know, I am in Ghana this summer chatting with cocoa farmers. As the third
(almost second) largest producer of cocoa, Ghana provides an interesting study
in where this ideal system of “fairness” breaks down. There are a number of
companies, as you would imagine, operating in the country, including Akuapa
Cooperative – the exclusive supplier of cocoa to the Fair Trade chocolate
manufacturer, Divine. While it does provide community development project
support for things like schools, it is hard to track down direct benefits to
the thousands of cooperative “members”. In fact, few of the farmers with whom
we spoke even seemed to realize that it is a cooperative, nor had any clue about
types of certifications. I am sure if I had a conversation with someone at
Kuapa Co., a more satisfactory answered could be supplied, but from this point,
it smells a bit fishy that there is such little awareness of what the
cooperative claims to do.
It is sad,
because so little thought goes into this dilemma on the consumer end. You can
easily hand over a dollar for a large Hershey’s bar, or a Cadbury bar in the
UK, without a care about those that ultimately lose out, those who actually
produce the raw material and yet never see the finished product. I’m not quite
sure what the answer is, though I think after this summer, it will be hard to
stomach any more big brand cheap chocolate. Trusting a single label is an
error, but it is possible to track down companies who practice more direct
trade and try conducting some or all processing at the origin. The costs are
higher, but when you think about what goes into a single bar of chocolate,
anything else seems like highway robbery!
Read more about Fair Trade and Kuapo Kokoo.
2 comments:
So,the farmer, even though they are a member of a coop and part of "Fair Trade", get no higher remuneration for producing quality beans. If this is the case, why would you only buy the higher priced chocolate that makes the chocolate companies wealthy, not the farmers? It sounds like the farmer is indifferent as to whether you buy Hersheys or Theos.
Thanks for this; an important point of clarification! So, anyone who sells to Kuapa is technically a member just by virtue of having a stake in the company. There are a subset of farmers who are also "fair trade" certified, although the ones in the communities I'm in are not. However, because of how Ghana prices cocoa, it is not clear that the price premium makes a difference. Kuapa does invest in schools and boreholes, etc. but so do many other cocoa companies buying in Ghana, as part of their CSR. This is not the case for all cocoa producing countries. Also, Theo is not fair trade certified, but rather has a different fair pricing arrangement (and Madecasse, which you know I love, is direct trade...much better). The system is not so bad, and having a stable price is pretty handy, but the bigger point is that it is dangerous to blindly accept a certification or label just at face value, because there is considerable variation between commodities and between geographies!
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